How Do I Say ' I Have A Terrible Stomachache?'

SHERRI WINSTON COMMENTARY

Ayuda, no puedo encontrar mi defibrillator. That means, Help! I can't find my defibrillator. One of the many new phrases I'm teaching myself in these, my golden years.

My foreign-language skills would not save my life. If I had a heart attack in Hialeah, I could tell my non-English-speaking hero that her zapatos estan muy buenos because I pay attention to feet and have learned to recognize good-looking shoes in all languages. However, I would not be able to tell her that my kidney was exploding or my heart was attacking or whatever.

Despite good-hearted attempts to learn Spanish in the past few years, it's like my teacher's good teachings fell on deaf ears. Well, my ears weren't exactly deaf, just daft.

Last week, about the time I officially became "a woman of a certain age," we ran a news story about the growing disparity between the native languages of healthcare aides and their elderly patients.

Since my physical decline can be calculated with a stopwatch rather than a calendar, my attention has shifted to the healthcare worker/client dynamic. I am always struck by the ethnic pairings I see at grocery stores and malls. Almost always the older person is American, usually white; almost always the worker is a minority, usually Latin or Haitian.

How well can the two communicate, especially if the need is critical? For example, how does one say, "Excuse me, my liver is exploding" in Creole?

Does "Oreo," have a Spanish equivalent? As in, "Help me, please! I must have an Oreo!" Which, trust me, would be an emergency in my room.

At my current rate of deterioration, I should be ready for "The Home" by dinnertime. Like my sisters in Metamucil, I do have some concerns about how I can better communicate with my caregivers at the old folks' home. I just wish my education in foreign language had been compulsory and had started back in my A-B-C days.

As much as I'd love to see us require students to study a foreign language from grade school on, I realize we could do a better job teaching English to English speakers. After all, I've seen those "man-on-the-street" interviews where Jay Leno uncovers the vast and rampant ignorance destined to trickle into our minimum-wage workforce.

People who work in nursing homes provide an invaluable service and are required to do hard, tedious and sometimes unpleasant labor. They do the dirty work that few others could tolerate. However, most of the young women and men who take jobs pushing wheelchairs, cleaning beds, rotating Old Lady Johnson so she won't get sores and delivering meds are not Harvard grads.

They often represent the population that had the fewest chances and fewest choices within our educational system. Or people new to our country and our language. Because they have trouble understanding us, we look at them as the problem.

But I say to you my fellow old-geezers-in-training, aren't we part of the problem, too?

I mean, would it kill us to pick up a book and study a new vocabulary?

These are the kinds of things that race through your mind when you become a woman of a certain age.

Whether my healthcare professional speaks English or not, I want to be ready.